Enlisting Health Insurance Giants to Help With Rapid Covid Tests Was a Dumb Idea

Authored by newrepublic.com and submitted by _hiddenscout

After being transferred three times, I was simply informed that they’d reimburse me for tests. I stopped to clarify: Will they reimburse full-freight for any test? Or do they have a preferred vendor where we can get them for free? I was put on hold for several minutes, while whoever I was on the phone with scurried away to find the answer to the obvious question his employer hadn’t prepped him for, after which I was finally told that their partner pharmacy is Walmart.

According to Google Maps, I live a 39-minute drive away from the nearest Walmart, or a whopping one hour and 23 minutes away by public transit. Unless I make that trek (and it may not shock you to hear that I won’t), my reimbursement requires me to save receipts, fill out paperwork, and mail it to my insurer if I want to get paid back less than half of what I paid for my last test at CVS. By the time I hung up the phone, the call had lasted 38 minutes.

And it’s not just me: The New York Times’s Sarah Kliff reported on Friday on the widespread pandemonium accompanying the rule going into effect: Insurers say they’ll need weeks to get the system going, and may even have to process claims manually. The Biden Administration has publicly encouraged people to keep their receipts when they buy antigen tests, without much instruction for what happens to those who don’t or to those who can’t, to those who don’t know about the preferred retailer clause, or those who can’t be bothered to fill out an indemnifying claim sheet after the fact. The only thing more gobsmacking than the Byzantine maze of a policy is how half-assedly they formulated the details of it. (As Kliff reports, one insurance broker has advised her clients to “save not just receipts but also the boxes that the tests come in, because some plans may require the boxes as proof of purchase.” Key pandemic mitigation provisions probably shouldn’t count on tens of millions of people to organize random trash to function properly.)

This rollout will be a disaster. And really, that should have been obvious: There’s a reason that the Covid-19 vaccines, monoclonal antibody treatments and antiviral drugs have been made free at the point of use, rather than routed through private insurers. It’s because the insurance industry is structurally incapable of achieving anything universally or efficiently.

wwwiley on January 17th, 2022 at 13:57 UTC »

It’s like health insurers don’t actually care about peoples health…

classof78 on January 17th, 2022 at 13:48 UTC »

The United States doesn't have an actual public health system.

Doctor420Strange69 on January 17th, 2022 at 13:23 UTC »

It’s wild that medical care isn’t more accessible and affordable during a fucking pandemic.